Send four!

[gfish]

I just got this set last night, showing me making the longest heaving line throw I tried for. Small coil with the Turk's head in your throwing hand, large coil carefully arranged in the other hand, ready to feed out cleanly. Practicing on the dock earlier in the week, us Two Weekers found we kept clenching down on the large coil, ruining the throw. So we invented the "open palm" mantra which proved quite useful.

You can nicely see the heaving line tied to the dockline in the final image. Slippy constrictor knot, which I definitely have to remember. I've never been as good at knots as I thought I should be, and I'm hoping some of this sticks.

That was dockline four, the first one to be sent over as we performed the rather intricate two point turn/reverse into the dock maneuver needed in Monterey. Docks and restaurant on one side, expensive sailing boats on another two sides, and our sister ship just a few meters away in the end. Sending the heaving line is moderately high stress, requiring a lot of fine control and distance estimation while a whole lot of things are loudly happening around you. It's particularly bad for lines three and four, as right behind you is the tiller, sweeping back and forth across most of the deck. If the first dockline doesn't make it, the whole docking process can be messed up. I was proud to be entrusted with it that time, and I'm even more proud that my record still stands at 100%.

Comments

[ivy]

These are great, thanks for sharing your experience. How did they figure out who to trust with those jobs? Performance on smaller ones where it mattered less earlier in the voyage? Practice sessions at bits of flotsam while underway?

[gfish]

It's pretty informal, for having an established command order, anyway. The Lady is a training ship, so you're expected to keep pushing yourself in a non-foolhardy way. After practicing on the dock, I was prepping one of the less important docklines (they come later in the process, used for fine tuning) and the first mate asked if I was feeling confident. I said I was, so he said great, do it. Later in the week I happened to be on the quarterdeck when "hands to docklines" was called, so I took four that time.

[corvi]

That's so exciting. Thank you for sharing!